Verbal Loop Hypothesis Research Articles

Pictorial memory in patients with right, left and diffuse brain damage

Immediate and delayed recognition of realistic pictures were studied with a continuous recognition procedure in large groups of aphasics, non-aphasic left and right brain-damaged patients, normal controls and patients with a dementia of the Alzheimer type. The study aimed at clarifying the following points. (a) Is visual recognition of easy to label pictorial stimuli mainly impaired by aphasia, as the verbal loop hypothesis would predict, or is it related to a right hemisphere damage, as the dual code hypothesis would rather suggest? (b) Is the influence of the verbal code critical for short-term visual memory and the visual code relevant only for delayed recognition, or is the visual code important both for short-term and for long-term visual memory? (c) Are results obtained by patients with focal brain injury different from those obtained by Alzheimer's disease patients? Data obtained suggest the following answers. (a) A verbal description is not necessary to store in memory pictorial material for immediate or delayed recognition, since aphasic patients scored in both conditions significantly better than right brain-damaged patients, (b) The visual code seems equally important for both immediate and delayed recognition, since no change was observed in the accuracy score of aphasic patients passing from the immediate to the delayed condition, (c) Pictorial memory disorders are much more important in Alzheimer's disease patients than in subjects with focal brain injury. Alzheimer's disease patients scored, in fact, significantly worse than any other group of subjects with focal brain damage, both in immediate and in delayed visual recognition. Furthermore, the same patients showed a further significant decline in performance passing from the immediate to the delayed condition, whereas no change in the same direction was shown by the other brain-damaged groups.

言語化の長さと図形の複雑さとの関連

According to the verbal-loop hypothesis, the complexity of line drawings is determined by the number of words needed to describe them. 40 Japanese undergraduates described 10 line drawings in Japanese and rated their complexity. The correlation of length of verbalization and rated complexity was low contrary to the consequence of hypothesis.

Nonverbal information storage in children and developmental information processing channel capacity

The present study was designed to test Glanzer and Clark's “verbal loop hypothesis” using children at various developmental levels. In particular, this study attempted to test whether the information output from “pure” verbal tasks is greater than from “pure” nonverbal tasks. A 3×2×2 multivariate complete factorial design was employed where Age (5, 8, 12), Input (Visual, Verbal), and Output (Reconstruction, Verbal Description) were main factors. The Ss were 120 children. Forty children each were selected randomly from each of 5-, 8-, and 12-year age levels. Ten children from each of the age groups were assigned randomly to each of the 4 main treatments. Ss were tested individually. The three main factors and the Age × Output Mode interaction were significant at the 01 level. The 4 asymptotic estimates of the information output (channel capacities) of children at any age ranked similarly by treatment. Children's information output was greatest for the “pure” nonverbal task and least for the “pure” verbal task. The verbal loop hypothesis would appear to be contradicted by these data.

The verbal loop hypothesis as a predictor of individual differences in short-term recall of tachistoscopically presented binary numbers

This experiment was a correlational study designed to investigate the ability of the verbal loop hypothesis to predict individual differences in the recall ability of 51 evening college students presented with 20 arrays of eight-digit binary numbers at exposure times of 0.5 sec. The independent variable was the binary array, and the two dependent variables to be correlated were verbalization length, measured in units of words, and stimulus difficulty, measured in units of number of errors. Glanzer & Clark’s (1962) finding of a high negative correlation between stimulus accuracy and mean verbalization length was replicated here by obtaining a high positive correlation between stimulus difficulty and mean stimulus verbalization length. However, there was no relationship found between the characteristic verbalization length of an S and his ability on the experimental task as measured by his total number of errors.

The verbal-loop hypothesis (VLH): A within-subject study with a perceptual recognition task

The verbal-loop hypothesis (VLH) was examined, using a within-S design, a perceptual recognition task, and a set of patterns of respectable pictorial quality. No significant relationship between verbalization and recognition accuracy was found.

The verbal loop hypothesis and the effects of similarity on recognition and communication in adults and children

The verbal loop hypothesis, which holds that verbal description underlies the recognition and communication of visual forms, was tested by determining whether performances in these two tasks were comparably affected by similarity. In the recognition task S attempted to select a previously presented test color from an array of four colors. In the communication task one S described a test color in an array of four, and then another S attempted to use this description to select the test color from the array. The similarity of the test to the other array colors was varied in both tasks, and 6-year-olds and adults served as Ss. The results supported the verbal loop hypothesis as similarity affected recognition and communication in the same way for both adults and children.

The verbal loop hypothesis: A statistical audit

Abstract Kelley's formula for the correlation between averages shows that the method used in previous studies to test the verbal-loop hypothesis is almost guaranteed to give an inflated correlation value. It is recommended that methods be used which eliminate the source of inflation.

Reversal and partial reversal shifts with verbal material

A series of four studies was conducted to investigate the influence of mediating representational responses on reversal and partial-reversal shifts involving verbal material. The general assumption tested was that the speed with which a reversal shift is executed depends on the accessibility of appropriate mediating representational responses. In Exp. I Ss were required initially to sort eight items into two categories and then during post-shift training to either switch the sorting response for every item (reversal shift) or for only half of the items in each category (half-reversal shift). Two kinds of verbal items were used: eight words, each one of which was an instance of one of two concepts, and eight unrelated consonant trigrams. With the conceptual words the reversal shift was executed more rapidly but no difference between a reversal and half-reversal was found with the trigrams. It was also discovered that up to 24 post-criterion trials of overlearning had no effect on post-shift behavior with either kind of verbal material. Experiment II found that overlearning up to 40 post-criterion trials had only minimal effects on reversal shifts involving trigrams. In Exp. III four kinds of shifts (one-quarter, one-half, three-quarters, and full-reversal) were compared with both conceptual words and trigrams. The full-reversal with conceptual instances proved to be the easiest. No significant difference existed among the other seven groups. Experiment IV, in which Ss initially sorted the conceptual instances into mixed categories and then shifted into either conceptually consistent categories or a reversal shift, showed the latter to be more difficult, suggesting that the accessibility of the representational response was more important to post-shift behavior than the reversal shift per se. The relevance of these results to mediational S-R theory and the verbal-loop hypothesis was discussed.

Encoding in the perceptual (visual) serial position effect

On the basis of the verbal loop hypothesis, specific changes in the shape of the perceptual serial position curve were predicted as a function of encoding, or verbalization length of the stimulus, and stimulus exposure time. The effects of post-stimulus delay, both with and without an interpolated task, were also explored. With eight-place binary numbers as stimuli, a group of 12 Ss was tested to evaluate the effect of these four variables—verbalization length, exposure time, delay time, and interpolated task during the delay. It was demonstrated that, as predicted, increasing the verbalization length and shortening the exposure time have similar effects. They tilt the serial position curve up on the right. The presence of an interpolated task produces an overall increase without, however, any effect on the shape of the serial position curve. Poststimulus delay, within the range used in this study, produces no clear or systematic effect.

The Verbal-Loop Hypothesis: Conventional Figures

A question of continuing practical and theoretical interest is the following: "What makes one stimulus simple, well-organized, easy to handle, while another stimulus is complex, poorly-organized, difficult to handle ?" The verbal-loop hypothesis answers this question by making a specific and simple assertion concerning the S's use of language and then by spelling out the implications of that assertion.' The answer differs markedly from the answers given by gestalt and information-theory approaches to perceptual organization.

The verbal loop hypothesis: Binary numbers

Summary Three experiments were carried out to test the generality of the verbal loop hypothesis—the hypothesis that S 's perceptual processing of a stimulus includes a covert verbalization and that the length of the verbalization determines the difficulty of the stimulus. In Exp. I, a relation was demonstrated between verbalization length and the accuracy of report of the binary numbers 0 to 11111111 (decimal 255). Since the binary numbers varied in length from one to eight digits, an alternative explanation based on the physical length of the stimulus was considered. It was found that predictions based on physical length (the number of digits) were almost as effective as predictions on the basis of verbalization length. To settle the issue between the explanation in terms of physical length and verbal loop, a second experiment was carried out which replicated Exp. I in all details except for the form of the stimuli. In Exp. II all the binary numbers were converted into eight-digit form by adding the appropriate supplementary number of zeroes to all binary numbers that had fewer than eight digits (e.g., 10 was converted into 00000010). In effect, physical size was held constant. With this form of the binary numbers, the relation between verbalization length and accuracy was shown to maintain itself. The relation between verbalization length and accuracy is, therefore, the more general one. A third experiment was carried out with the eight-digit form of the binary numbers that replicated the findings of Exp. II.

Accuracy of perceptual recall: An analysis of organization

A series of investigations was carried out to analyze the determinants of the difficulty of perceptual recall of a systematically varied set of stimuli. The stimuli were arrays of eight shapes that were each either black or white. In Part I, the accuracy with which S s could reproduce these arrays under .5-sec. exposure was determined. In Part II, another method involving discrimination between arrays yielded a similar ranking of accuracy scores. This indicated that the scores obtained in Part I were not a function of the particular method used. The accuracy scores of Part I were then subjected to various types of analysis. An analysis based on information measure showed some success in accounting for the difficulty of individual arrays. For several reasons this analysis was found to be unsatisfactory. Another type of analysis was constructed, based on the verbal-loop hypothesis—the hypothesis that the S s' perceptual processing includes a covert verbalization and that the length of the verbalization determines the difficulty of the stimulus for perceptual tasks. Empirically derived measures based on this hypothesis were shown to account for a major part of the variance in array difficulty. The relevance of the assumption and the findings to the general problem of perceptual organization and encoding is discussed. The verbal-loop hypothesis is presented as an alternative to gestalt and information theory analyses of organization.